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Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Specialist for the IBM System Storage product line at the
IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2011, Tony celebrated his 25th year anniversary with IBM Storage on the same day as the IBM's Centennial. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services. You can also follow him on Twitter @az990tony.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson
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Last week, I presented IBM's strategic initiative, the IBM Information Infrastructure, which is part of IBM's New Enterprise Data Center vision. This week, I will try to get around to talking about some of theproducts that support those solutions.

I was going to set the record straight on a variety of misunderstandings, rumors or speculations, but I think most have been taken care of already. IBM blogger BarryW covered the fact that SVC now supports XIV storage systems, in his post[SVC and XIV],and addressed some of the FUD already. Here was my list:

Now that IBM has an IBM-branded model of XIV, IBM will discontinue (insert another product here)

I had seen speculation that XIV meant the demise of the N series, the DS8000 or IBM's partnership with LSI.However, the launch reminded people that IBM announced a new release of DS8000 features, new models of N series N6000,and the new DS5000 disk, so that squashes those rumors.

IBM XIV is a (insert tier level here) product

While there seems to be no industry-standard or agreement for what a tier-1, tier-2 or tier-3 disk system is, there seemed to be a lot of argument over what pigeon-hole category to put IBM XIV in. No question many people want tier-1 performance and functionality at tier-2 prices, and perhaps IBM XIV is a good step at giving them this. In some circles, tier-1 means support for System z mainframes. The XIV does not have traditional z/OS CKD volume support, but Linux on System z partitions or guests can attach to XIV via SAN Volume Controller (SVC), or through NFS protocol as part of the Scale-Out File Services (SoFS) implementation.

Whenever any radicalgame-changing technology comes along, competitors with last century's products and architectures want to frame the discussion that it is just yet another storage system. IBM plans to update its Disk Magic and otherplanning/modeling tools to help people determine which workloads would be a good fit with XIV.

IBM XIV lacks (insert missing feature here) in the current release

I am glad to see that the accusations that XIV had unprotected, unmirrored cache were retracted. XIV mirrors all writes in the cache of two separate modules, with ECC protection. XIV allows concurrent code loadfor bug fixes to the software. XIV offers many of the features that people enjoy in other disksystems, such as thin provisioning, writeable snapshots, remote disk mirroring, and so on.IBM XIV can be part of a bigger solution, either through SVC, SoFS or GMAS that provide thebusiness value customers are looking for.

IBM XIV uses (insert block mirroring here) and is not as efficient for capacity utilization

It is interesting that this came from a competitor that still recommends RAID-1 or RAID-10 for itsCLARiiON and DMX products.On the IBM XIV, each 1MB chunk is written on two different disks in different modules. When disks wereexpensive, how much usable space for a given set of HDD was worthy of argument. Today, we sell you abig black box, with 79TB usable, for (insert dollar figure here). For those who feel 79TB istoo big to swallow all at once, IBM offers "capacity on demand" pricing, where you can pay initially for as littleas 22TB, but get all the performance, usability, functionality and advanced availability of the full box.

IBM XIV consumes (insert number of Watts here) of energy

For every disk system, a portion of the energy is consumed by the number of hard disk drives (HDD) andthe remainder to UPS, power conversion, processors and cache memory consumption. Again, the XIV is a bigblack box, and you can compare the 8.4 KW of this high-performance, low-cost storage one-frame system with thewattage consumed by competitive two-frame (sometimes called two-bay) systems, if you are willing to take some trade-offs. To getcomparable performance and hot-spot avoidance, competitors may need to over-provision or use faster, energy-consuming FC drives, and offer additional software to monitor and re-balance workloads across RAID ranks.To get comparable availability, competitors may need to drop from RAID-5 down to either RAID-1 or RAID-6.To get comparable usability, competitors may need more storage infrastructure management software to hide theinherent complexity of their multi-RAID design.

Of course, if energy consumption is a major concern for you, XIV can be part of IBM's many blended disk-and-tapesolutions. When it comes to being green, you can't get any greener storage than tape! Blended disk-and-tapesolutions help get the best of both worlds.

Well, I am glad I could help set the record straight. Let me know what other products people you would like me to focus on next.

This post will focus on Information Compliance, the fourth and final part of the four-part series this week.I have received a few queries on my choice of sequence for this series: Availability, Security, Retention andCompliance.

Why not have them in alphabetical order? IBM avoids alphabetizing in one language, because thenit may not be alphabetized when translated to other languages.

Why not have them in a sequence that spells outan easy to remember mnemonic, like "CARS"? Again, when translated to other languages, those mnemonics no longerwork.

Instead, I worked with our marketing team for a more appropriate sequence, based on psychology and the cognitive bias of [primacy and recency effects].

Here's another short 2-minute video, on Information Compliance

Full disclosure: I am not a lawyer. The following will delveinto areas related to government and industry regulations. Consultyour risk officer or legal counsel to make sure any IT solution is appropriatefor your country, your industry, or your specific situation.

IBM estimates there are over 20,000 regulations worldwide related to information storage and transmission.

For information security, some regulations relate to privacy and prevention of unauthorized access. Twoprominent ones in the United States are:

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996

HIPAA regulates health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses in how they handle the privacy of patient's medical records. These regulations apply whether the information is on film, paper, or storedelectronically. Obviously, electronic medical records are easier to keep private. Here is an excerpt froman article from [WebMD]:

"There are very good ways to protect data electronically. Although it sounds scary, it makes data more protected than current paper records. For example, think about someone looking at your medical chart in the hospital. It has a record of all that is happening -- lab results, doctor consultations, nursing notes, orders, prescriptions, etc. Anybody who opens it for whatever reason can see all of this information. But if the chart is an electronic record, it's easy to limit access to any of that. So a physical therapist writing physical therapy notes can only see information related to physical therapy. There is an opportunity with electronic records to limit information to those who really need to see it. It could in many ways allow more privacy than current paper records."

GLBA regulates the handling of sensitive customer information by banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and other financial service providers. Financial companies use tape encryption to comply with GLBA when sending tapes from one firm to another. IBM was the first to deliver tape drive encryption withthe TS1120, and then later with LTO-4 and TS1130 tape drives.

For information retention, there are a lot of regulations that deal with how information is stored, in some casesimmutable to protect against unethical tampering, and when it can be discarded. Two prominent regulations inthe United States are:

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 17a-4 of 1997

In the past, the IT industryused the acronym "WORM" which stands for the "Write Once, Read Many" nature of certain media, like CDs, DVDs,optical and tape cartridges. Unfortunately, WORM does not apply to disk-based solutions, so IBM adopted the languagefrom SEC 17a-4 that calls for storage that is "Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable" or NENR. This new umbrella term applies to disk-based solutions, as well as tape and optical WORM media.

SEC 17a-4 indicates that broker/dealers and exchange members must preserve all electronic communications relating to the business of their firmm a specific period of time. During this time, the information must not be erased or re-written.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002

SOX was born in the wake of [Enron and other corporate scandals]. It protects the way that financial information is stored, maintained and presented to investors, as well as disciplines those who break its rules. It applies onlyto public companies, i.e. those that offer their securities (stock shares, bonds, liabilities) to be sold to the publicthrough a listing on a U.S. exchange, such as NASDAQ or NYSE.

SOX focuses on preventing CEOs and other executives from tampering the financial records.To meet compliance, companies are turning to the [IBM System Storage DR550] which providesNon-erasable, Non-rewriteable (NENR) storage for financial records. Unlike competitive products like EMC Centera thatfunction mostly as space-heaters on the data center floor once they filled up, the DR550 can be configured as a blended disk-and-tape storage system, so that the most recent, and most likely to be accessed data, remains on disk, but the older, least likely to be accessed data, is moved automatically to less expensive, more environment-friendly "green" tape media.

Did SOX hurt the United States' competitiveness? Critics feared that these new regulations would discourage newcompanies from going public. Earnst & Young found these fears did not come true, and published a study [U.S. Record IPO Activity from 2006 Continues in 2007]. In fact, the improved confidence that SOX has given investors has given rise to similarlegislation in other parts of the world: Euro-Sox for the European Union Investor Protection Act, and J-SOX Financial Instruments and Exchange Law for Japan.

For those who only read the first and last paragraphs of each post, here is my recap:Information Compliance is ensuring that information is protected against regional disasters, unauthorizedaccess, and unethical tampering, as required to meet industry and government regulations. Such regulationsoften apply if the information is stored on traditional paper or film media, but can often be handled more cost-effectively when stored electronically. Appropriate IT governance can help maintain investor confidence.

In Monday's post, [IBM Information Infrastructure launches today], I explained how this strategic initiative fit into IBM's New EnterpriseData Center vision. The launch was presented at the IBM Storage and Storage Networking Symposium to over 400 attendeesin Montpelier, France, with corresponding standing-room-only crowds in New York and Tokyo.

This post will focus on Information Retention, the third of the four-part series this week.

Here's another short 2-minute video, on Information Retention

Let's start with some interesting statistics.Fellow blogger Robin Harris on his StorageMojo blog has an interesting post:[Our changing file workloads],which discusses the findings of study titled"Measurement and Analysis of Large-Scale Network File System Workloads"[14-page PDF]. This paper was a collaborationbetween researchers from University of California Santa Cruz and our friends at NetApp.Here's an excerpt from the study:

Compared to Previous Studies:

Both of our workloads are more write-oriented. Read to write byte ratios have significantly decreased.

National Public Radio (NPR) had an interesting piece the other day. By analyzing old photos, a researcher for Cold War Analysis was able to identify an interesting [pattern for Russian presidents]. (Be sure to listen to the 3-minute audio to hear a hilarious song about the results!)

Which brings me to my own collection of "old photos". I bought my first digital camera in the year 2000,and have taken over 15,000 pictures since then. Before that,I used 35mm film camera, getting the negatives developed and prints made. Some of these date back to my years in High School and College. I have a mix of sizes, from 3x5, 4x6 and 5x7 inches,and sometimes I got double prints.Only a small portion are organized intoscrapbooks. The rest are in envelopes, prints and negatives, in boxes taking up half of my linen closet in my house.Following the success of the [Library of Congress using flickr],I decided the best way to organize these was to have them digitized first. There are several ways to do this.

Flat-bed scanner

This method is just too time consuming. Lift the lid place 1 or a few prints face down on the glass, close the lid,press the button, and then repeat. I estimate 70 percent of my photos are in [landscape orientation], and 30 percent in [portrait mode]. I can either spend extra time toorient each photo correctly on the glass, or rotate the digital image later.

Sheet-feed scanner

I was pleased to learn that my Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 sheet-feed scanner can take in a short stack (dozen or so) photos, and generate JPEG format files for each. I can select 150, 300 or 600dpi, and five levels of JPEG compression.All the photos feed in portrait mode, which I can then rotate later on the computer once digitized.A command line tool called [ImageMagick] can help automate the rotations.While I highly recommend the ScanSnap scanner, this is still a time-consuming process for thousands of photos.

"The best way to save your valuable photos may be by eliminating the paper altogether. Consider making digital images of all your photos."

Here's how it works:You ship your prints (or slides, or negatives) totheir facility in Irvine, California. They have a huge machine that scans them all at 300dpi, no compression, andthey send back your photos and a DVD containing digitized versions in JPEG format, all for only 50 US dollars plusshipping and handling, per thousand photos. I don't think I could even hire someone locally to run my scanner for that!

The deal got better when I contacted them. For people like me with accounts on Facebook, flickr, MySpace or Blogger,they will [scan your first 1000 photos for free] (plus shipping and handling). I selected a thousand 4x6" photos from my vast collection, organized them into eight stacks with rubber bands,and sent them off in a shoe box. The photos get scanned in landscape mode, so I had spent about four hours in preparing what I sent them, making sure they were all face up, with the top of the picture oriented either to the top or left edge.For the envelopes that had double prints, I "deduplicated" them so that only one set got scanned.

The box weighed seven pounds, and cost about 10 US dollars to send from Tucson to Irvinevia UPS on Tuesday. They came back the following Monday, all my photos plus the DVD, for 20 US dollars shipping and handling. Each digital image is about 1.5MB in size, roughly 1800x1200 pixels in size, so easily fit on a single DVD. The quality is the sameas if I scanned them at 300dpi on my own scanner, and comparable to a 2-megapixel camera on most cell phones.Certainly not the high-res photos I take with my Canon PowerShot, but suitable enough for email or Web sites. So, for about 30 US dollars, I got my first batch of 1000 photos scanned.

ScanMyPhotos.com offers a variety of extra priced options, like rotating each file to the correct landscape or portrait orientation, color correction, exact sequence order, hosting them on their Web site online for 30 days to share with friends and family, and extra copies of the DVD.All of these represent a trade-off between having them do it for me for an additional fee, or me spending time doing it myself--either before in the preparation, or afterwards managing the digital files--so I can appreciate that.

Perhaps the weirdest option was to have your original box returned for an extra $9.95? If you don't have a hugecollection of empty shoe boxes in your garage, you can buy a similarly sized cardboard box for only $3.49 at the local office supply store, so I don't understand this one. The box they return all your photos in can easily be used for the next batch.

I opted not to get any of these extras. The one option I think they should add would be to have them just discardthe prints, and send back only the DVD itself. Or better yet, discard the prints, and email me an ISO file of the DVD that I can burn myself on my own computer.Why pay extra shipping to send back to me the entire box of prints, just so that I can dump the prints in the trash myself? I will keep the negatives, in case I ever need to re-print with high resolution.

Overall, I am thoroughlydelighted with the service, and will now pursue sending the rest of my photos in for processing, and reclaim my linen closet for more important things. Now that I know that a thousand 4x6 prints weighs 7 pounds, I can now estimate how many photos I have left to do, and decide on which discount bulk option to choose from.

With my photos digitized, I will be able to do all the things that IBM talks about with Information Retention:

Place them on an appropriate storage tier. I can keep them on disk, tape or optical media.

Easily move them from one storage tier to another. Copying digital files in bulk is straightforward, and as new techhologies develop, I can refresh the bits onto new media, to avoid the "obsolescence of CDs and DVDs" as discussed in this article in[PC World].

Share them with friends and family, either through email, on my Tivo (yes, my Tivo is networked to my Mac and PC and has the option to do this!), or upload themto a photo-oriented service like [Kodak Gallery or flickr].

Keep multiple copies in separate locations. I could easily burn another copy of the DVD myself and store in my safe deposit box or my desk at work.With all of the regional disasters like hurricanes, an alternative might be to backup all your files, including your digitized photos, with an online backup service like [IBM Information Protection Services] from last year's acquisition of Arsenal Digital.

If the prospect of preserving my high school and college memories for the next few decades seems extreme,consider the [Long Now Foundation] is focused on retaining information for centuries.They areeven suggesting that we start representing years with five digits, e.g., 02008, to handle the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect 8,000 years from now. IBM researchers are also working on [long-term preservation technologies and open standards] to help in this area.

For those who only read the first and last paragraphs of each post, here is my recap:Information Retention is about managing [information throughout its lifecycle], using policy-based automation to help with the placement, movement and expiration. An "active archive" of information serves to helpgain insight, innovate, and make better decisions. Disk, tape, and blended disk-and-tape solutions can all play a part in a tiered information infrastructure for long-term retention of information.

In Monday's post, [IBM Information Infrastructure launches today], I explained how this strategic initiative fit into IBM's New EnterpriseData Center vision. For you podcast fans, IBM Vice Presidents Bob Cancilla (Disk Systems), Craig Smelser (Storage and Security Software), and Mike Riegel (Information Protection Services), highlight some of the new products and offerings in this 12-minute recording:

This post will focus on Information Security, the second of the four-part series this week.

Here's another short 2-minute video, on Information Security

Security protects information against both internal and external threats.

For internal threats, most focus on whether person A has a "need-to-know" about information B. Most of the time, thisis fairly straightforward. However, sometimes production data is copied to support test and development efforts. Here is the typical scenario: the storage admin copies production data that contains sensitive or personal informationto a new copy and authorizes software engineers or testers full read/write access to this data.In some cases, the engineers or testers may be employees, other times they might be hired contractors from an outside firm.In any case, they may not be authorized to read this sensitive information. To solve this IBM announced the[IBM Optim Data Privacy Solution] for a variety of environments, including Siebel and SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP)applications.

I found this solution quite clever. The challenge is that production data is interrelated and typically liveinside [relational databases].For example, one record in one database might have a name and serial number, and then that serial number is used to reference a corresponding record in another database. The IBM Optim Data Privacy Solution applies a range of"masks" to transform complex data elements such as credit card numbers, email addresses and national identifiers, while retaining their contextual meaning. The masked results are fictitious, but consistent and realistic, creating a “safe sandbox” for application testing. This method can mask data from multiple interrelated applications to create a “production-like” test environment that accurately reflects end-to-end business processes.The testers get data they can use to validate their changes, and the storage admins can rest assured theyhave not exposed anyone's sensitive information.

Beyond just who has the "need-to-know", we might also be concerned with who is "qualified-to-act".Most systems today have both authentication and authorization support. Authentication determines that youare who you say you are, through the knowledge of unique userid/passwords combinations, or other credentials. Fingerprint, eye retinal scans or other biometrics look great in spy movies, but they are not yetwidely used. Instead, storage admins have to worry about dozens of different passwords on differentsystems. One of the many preview announcements made by Andy Monshaw on Monday's launch was that IBM isgoing to integrate the features of [Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On] into IBM's Productivity Center software, and be renamed "IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center".You enter one userid/password, and you will not have to enter the individual userid/password of all the managedstorage devices.

Once a storage admin is authenticated,they may or may not be authorized to read or act on certain information.Productivity Center offers role-based authorization, so that people can be identifiedby their roles (tape operator, storage administrator, DBA) and that would then determine what they areauthorized to see, read, or act upon.

For external threats, you need to protect data both in-flight and at-rest. In-flight deals with data thattravels over a wire, or wirelessly through the air, from source to destination. When companies have multiplebuildings, the transmissions can be encrypted at the source, and decrypted on arrival.The bigger threat is data at-rest. Hackers and cyber-thieves looking to download specific content, like personal identifiable information, financial information, and other sensitive data.

IBM was the first to deliver an encrypting tape drive, the TS1120. The encryption process is handled right at the driveitself, eliminating the burden of encryption from the host processing cycles, and eliminating the need forspecialized hardware sitting between server and storage system. Since then, we have delivered encryption onthe LTO-4 and TS1130 drives as well.

When disk drives break or are decommissioned, the data on them may still be accessible. Customers have a tough decision to make when a disk drive module (DDM) stops working:

Send it back to the vendor or manufacturer to have it replaced, repaired or investigated, exposing potentialsensitive information.

Keep the broken drive, forfeit any refund or free replacement, and then physically destroy the drive. Thereare dozens of videos on [YouTube.com] on different ways to do this!

The launch previewed the [IBM partnership with LSI and Seagate] to deliver encryption technology for disk drives, known as "Full Drive Encryption" or FDE.Having all data encrypted on all drives, without impacting performance, eliminates having to decide which data gets encryptedand which doesn't. With data safely encrypted, companies can now send in their broken drives for problemdetermination and replacement.Anytime you can apply a consistent solution across everything, without human intervention anddecision making, the less impact it will have. This was the driving motivation in both disk and tape driveencryption.

(Early in my IBM career, some lawyers decided we need to add a standard 'paragraph' to our copyright text in the upper comment section of our software modules, and so we had a team meeting on this. The lawyer that presented to us that perhaps only20 to 35 percent of the modules needed to be updated with this paragraph, and taught us what to look for to decidewhether or not the module needed to be changed. Myteam argued how tedious this was going to be, that this will take time to open up each module, evaluate it, and make the decision. With thousands of modules involved the process could take weeks. The fact that this was going to take us weeks did not seem to concern our lawyer one bit, it was just thecost of doing business.Finally, I asked if it would be legal to just add the standard paragraph to ALL the modules without any analysis whatsoever. The lawyer was stunned. There was no harm adding this paragraph to all the modules, he said, but that would be 3-5x more work and why would I even suggest that. Our team laughed, recognizing immediately that it was the fastest way to get it done. One quick program updated all modules that afternoon.)

To manage these keys, IBM previewed the Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM).This software helps automate the management of encryption keys throughout their lifecycle to help ensure that encrypted data on storage devices cannot be compromised if lost or stolen. It will apply to both disk and tapeencryption, so that one system will manage all of the encryption keys in your data center.

For those who only read the first and last paragraphs of each post, here is my recap:Information Security is intended as an end-to-end capability to protect against both internal and external threats, restricting access only to those who have a "need-to-know" or are "qualified-to-act". Security approacheslike "single sign-on" and encryption that applies to all tapes and all disks in the data center greatly simplify the deployment.

In yesterday's post, [IBM Information Infrastructure launches today], I explained how this strategic initiative fit into IBM's New EnterpriseData Center vision. For those who prefer audio podcasts, here is Marissa Benekos interviewing Andy Monshaw, IBM General Manager of IBM System Storage.

This post will focus on Information Availability, the first of the four-part series this week.

Here's another short 2-minute video, on Information Availability

I am not in marketing department anymore, so have no idea how much IBM spentto get these videos made, but hate for the money to go wasted. I suspect theonly way they will get viewed is if I include them in my blog. I hope youlike them.

As with many IT terms, "availability" might conjure up different meanings for different people.

Some can focus on the pure mechanics of delivering information. An information infrastructure involves all of thesoftware, servers, networks and storage to bring information to the application or end user, so all of the chainsin the link must be highly available: software should not crash, servers should have "five nines" (99.999%) uptime, networks should be redundant, and storage should handle the I/O request with sufficient performance. For tape libraries, the tape cartridge must be available, robotics are needed to fetch the tape, and a drive must be available toread the cartridge. All of these factors represent the continuous operations and high availability features of business continuity.

In addition to the IT equipment, you need to make sure your facilities that support that equipment, such aspower and cooling, are also available.Independent IT analyst Mark Peters from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) summarizes his shock about the findings in a recent [survey commissioned by Emerson Network Power]on his post [Backing Up Your Back Up]. Here is an excerpt:

"The net take-away is that the majority of SMBs in the US do not have back-up power systems. As regional power supplies get more stretched in many areas, the possibility of power outages increases and obviously many SMBs would be vulnerable. Indeed, while the small business decision makers questioned for the survey ranked such power outages ahead of other threats (fires, government regulation, weather, theft and employee turnover) only 39% had a back-up power system. Yeah, you could say, but anything actually going wrong is unlikely; but apparently not, as 79% of those surveyed had experienced at least one power outage during 2007. Yeah, you might say, but maybe the effects were minor; again, apparently not, since 42% of those who'd had outages had to actually close their businesses during the longest outages. The DoE says power outages cost $80 billion a year and businesses bear 98% of those costs."

Others might be more concerned about outages resulting from planned and unplanned downtime. Storage virtualizationcan help reduce planned downtime, by allowing data to be migrated from one storage device to another withoutdisrupting the application's ability to read and write data. The latest "Virtual Disk Mirroring" (VDM) feature of the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller takes it one stepfurther, providing high-availability even for entry-level and midrange disk systems managed by the SVC.For unplanned downtime, IBM offers a complete range of support, from highly available clusters, two-site and three-site disaster recovery support, and application-aware data protection through IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

Many outages are caused by human error, and in many cases it is the human factor that prevent quick resolution.Storage admins are unable to isolate the failing component, identify the configuration or provide the appropriateproblem determination data to the technical team ready to offer support and assistance. For this, IBM TotalStorageProductivity Center software, and its hardware-version the IBM System Storage Productivity Center, can helpreduce outage time and increase information availability. It can also provide automation to predict or provideearly warning of impending conditions that could get worse if not taken care of.

But perhaps yet another take on information availability is the ability to find and communicate the right informnationto the right people at the right time. Recently, Google announced a historic milestone, their search engine nowindexes over [One trillion Web pages]!Google and other search engines have changed the level of expectations for finding information. People ask whythey can find information on the internet so quickly, yet it takes weeks for companies to respond to a judge foran e-discovery request.

Lastly, the team at IBM's[Eightbar blog] pointedme to Mozilla Lab's Ubiquity project for their popular FireFox browser. This project aims to help people communicate the information in a more natural way, rather than unfriently URL links on an email. It is still beta, of course, but helps show what "information availability" might be possible in the near future.Here is a 7-minute demonstration:

For those who only read the first and last paragraphs of each post, here is my recap:Information Availability includes Business Continuity and Data Protection to facilitatequick recovery, storage virtualization to maximize performance and minimize planned downtime, infrastructure management and automation to reduce human error, and the ability to find and communicate information to others.